Plymouth State artists on display

This T-shirt by Lacey Mason is among the works to be displayed at Plymouth State University's annual student art exhibition April 30 and through May 14. (COURTESY)

Mike Heitz' "unnamed" ink wash and line drawing is among the works to be displayed at Plymouth State University's annual student art exhibition April 30 and through May 14. COURTESY

PLYMOUTH - Plymouth State University's Department of Art is presenting 17 students who are making their debut as painters, designers, printmakers and creators. The department's annual Bachelor of Fine Arts Exhibitions in Graphic Design and Studio Art starts Tuesday and runs through May 14.

Graphic design projects will be exhibited at the Silver Center for Arts, while the studio art works will be displayed at the Karl Drerup Art Gallery in the Draper and Maynard Building.

Tuesday's opening receptions will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. at each venue. A talk will be held from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the Drerup Gallery.

"There comes a time in all our lives when we declare ourselves to be this or that person, profession, or thing," said gallery director and art professor Terry Downs. "For artists, this is a powerful moment. It is when they discover what their personal mark is in this world. Like a fingerprint, it bears the stamp of individuality.

"Over the past four years, the faculty have nurtured the artist inside these students. They have aided this self-discovery by encouraging the artistic diversity and singularity of each person. In these exhibitions we see the newly declared direction each one has chosen," Downs said.

The exhibition presents work that is the capstone achievement of a year of intensive inquiry, creative challenge, experimentation and exploration, the exhibition's organizers said in a news release.

Mason hopes to work in the field of children's media. Her BFA graphic design thesis project was to create a visual identity for a zoo.

"In my project, the River Park Zoo is a 90-acre zoological park fictitiously located in Oregon," Mason said. "I chose a zoo because it played well to my strengths in relating to children, but still had a variety of aspects to design that range from the whimsical to the professional, including signage, shops with merchandise, food locations and packaging, marketing materials and the corporate identity for the park itself."

Heitz is a Warren native now finishing his BFA degree with a concentration in drawing. His work deals primarily with abstract shapes and forms, with "an obsessive attention to straight lines."

Heitz drew his initial inspiration from Zen arts, where a few simple brush strokes can depict an entire scene. The pieces he creates use ink washes and lines deal with formation, motion and natural and inorganic forms, like a stain on a carpet or splattered paint.